Guiding Light
by Suzan Gray
Summary: Gellert and Albus reunite in the void.


**GUIDING LIGHT**

He had been waiting for death. It comes to him in the form of a serpent who slithers into his cell that resides in the uppermost level of Nurmengard at night, a fortress he himself created that is for the first time breached, but it is nothing like he imagined.

His Reaper is a child. A violent, paranoid, angry child whose temper tantrum has caused the world to fall into chaos. Tom Riddle is a dangerously powerful idiot who let himself get carried away by his irrational ambition, an overcompensation of a damaged childhood, and now is lost in his own fear, lashing out at everything and everyone like a cornered animal.

Gellert would have felt sorry for him, in other circumstances. Perhaps he does, on some level. He, too, has long drifted away from the path he was supposed to follow, and not even the stars can guide him now, but he cannot sympathize with cowardice. All that remains is death, the next great adventure.

Of course what Voldemort wants is the Elder Wand. Gellert knows where it is, knows that despite his taunting and his mockery of The Dark Lord that Voldemort will find it, because even if he is a child, Gellert is an old man whose strength is half of what it used to be. His gleeful derision results in the raising of a wand, and for the first time, Gellert feels that instinctual thrill of fear, the knowledge of an inevitable end.

He only wishes Voldemort could have waited another fifteen minutes. When he glances out the tiny window of his cell, he can see the night is starting to fade, and a sunrise is chasing away the dark.

Alas, he can be allowed no such luxury.

There is only green, and then nothing. It is an odd feeling-or maybe it's not a feeling at all? There's a sensation, as if he's drifting in the depth of depthless waters and a stream is gently carrying him away, but that can't be right, because he is dead and there is no water. His consciousness still exists on some level, realizes his body is gone, like an anchor that was tied to his feet to keep him from floating away, except the chain has snapped now and he is gone.

His soul wanders the void it has been swallowed by, and he thinks this must be eternity. Not the definition of an infinite amount of time, but a gaping hole somewhere between existence and non-existence. Suddenly he envies the child that has ended his life; Voldemort is still grounded by his madness to something concrete. Gellert will drift, and drift, and drift... can souls go mad as well?

He doesn't know where to turn. There is no darkness, no light, there is _nothing_. He doesn't know where to go. There are no directions here, no stars, no sun, no sky, no ground. There's only this void. This insufferable void.

Gellert thought the decades he has suffered in Nurmengard would have made up for some of what he's done, thought the remorse that has tormented him especially for the last few years of his life would have at least given him a guiding light, but all he is left with is this purgatory. An eternal limbo, perhaps even worse than hell itself. At least hell causes pain. Torture, certainly, but it's still a _feeling_. There is nothing within this void. Only numbness.

Albus no doubt has already found his way through the void. Gellert only wishes he could've done something to stop Voldemort, knowing that the serpent child will desecrate the man's tomb, though he bets Albus himself probably would care less about the desecration and more about the loss of the Elder Wand.

There are many, _many _ways in which Albus has always been the better man, though Gellert has only realized this at the edge of death. In a way, he supposes, they have pushed each other into the glory of two extremes. Without Albus, Gellert probably would not have ended up becoming such a powerful dark wizard. Without Gellert, Albus would never have become the legend that he is today.

He regrets it. Thinks it would've been better if they could've just been Albus and Gellert, two childhood friends exploring the boundaries of magic, instead of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, former friends turned into enemies.

_For the Greater Good._

The slogan once cherished is now a curse that haunts him. Ariana's death, a war that rippled destruction through masses of innocent people, the loss of his best friend, all for the greater good? What good has he accomplished? His whole life, spent in a mad chase for he knows not what anymore, but he'd been running, neither from anything nor towards anything. Running for the sake of it. And now he's lost.

He doesn't know how much time has passed, if any has passed at all. He supposes time can't really pass in eternity, can it? He'll be here, like this, repenting for his sins over and over and over until there is nothing left of him to repent. Perhaps the void will be merciful and swallow him up, and he'll become one with it, unable to think.

Thinking has become a form of self-inflicted torture. There is no escape. He keeps wandering. There is no escape. He searches for everything, for anything, for the faintest hint of light or even darkness, but he finds nothing. There is no escape. The only thing he has left is resignation, and acceptance. There is no escape.

Then, there is wind.

The scent of grass. A door opening, his feet leading him up the steps into an achingly familiar house. Stairs creaking under his boots. A bedroom, compact and cosy. The sound of a quill scrawling ink on old scrolls of parchment. The light of a candle sitting on the corner of a desk. And a smile, a boyish smile, a face framed with auburn hair and graced with twinkling blue eyes that meet him the moment he steps in.

"Hello, Gellert," the boy sitting against the desk in his old room in Godric's Hollow says, his quill paused as he looks at his old friend who is not at all old anymore, as if they've fallen into the memory in a Pensieve. It is all so sudden, but it is all so logical in an impossible way, like how dreams seem perfectly reasonable until you wake up, but there is a difference: he knows there is no waking from this dream.

"Albus," Gellert says, surprised his vocal cords work, but not surprised at the crack in his voice. His hands are shaking and Albus makes a casual swishing movement with his wand that has seemed to appear out of thin air between his fingers. Another chair slides up next to his own near the desk. Gellert tries to swallow, but his throat is too tight. He tries to smirk in that merry, wild way like he used to, but it's unsteady. "It's been a while."

Albus nods and sighs, as if knowing exactly the weight of those words, and maybe he does. Albus always knows everything.

"It took you quite a while to find me, Gellert. I was starting to think you got lost on your way here." he remarks as if this was a meeting that had been planned all along.

Gellert laughs at the ridiculous statement, and can't decide whether Albus is being polite or modest. "I was lost, for a very long time, I suspect," he says, shaking his head with an almost mad grin on his face. "But_ I_ didn't find _you_. It's the other way around, isn't it?"

Albus merely smiles, putting his quill down on the desk as the ink dries.

"Let's talk, Gellert," Outside the stars are shining bright. "Tell me where you've been, old friend."


End file.
